BG Reads | News You Need to Know (July 8, 2022)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Arrival of giants like Samsung just start of transformational moment in Central Texas (Austin Business Journal)
2021 was a record year?for corporate relocation and expansion announcements in the Austin metro, with 26,697 jobs announced across Central Texas. That included from giants such as Tesla, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Amazon.com Inc.
2022 is lagging that pace slightly. Through April, there were 28 announcements of relocations and 47 of expansions, with companies pledging to create 7,669 jobs, according to data tracked by Opportunity Austin, the economic development wing of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce. If that pace continues, the five-county metro would end the year with 18,406 jobs announced.
What local leaders are most proud of is the fact that the companies that are coming to Austin span various industries, from automotive suppliers like CelLink to social media companies like TikTok Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc.?eating up downtown high-rises. That could prove hugely beneficial if a recession sweeps the country,?as some experts are predicting.
"We are not just a single-sector economy. We've built that out very intentionally," said?Laura Huffman, president and CEO of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce. "The end result of all that work is resiliency that allows us to weather economic storms or natural disasters or other pandemics — things that will cause economies to slump. This region generally comes in last on those slumps and emerges first from those slumps."…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin-Bergstrom International Airport to receive $15M under infrastructure law (Community Impact)
The Austin-Bergstrom International Airport will receive $15 million to further its expansion efforts through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, announced July 7.
“The infrastructure law we successfully approved over opposition from every other Central Texas member is now also successfully marshaling funds right here to Austin to begin making our much-needed airport expansion plans a reality,” Doggett said in a press release.
On July 7, the?Biden Administration announced?the Federal Aviation Administration will award almost $1 billion to 85 airports across the county through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s?Airport Terminal Program.
“The general expansion project is to make sure that locally we're making investments in helping our airport expand rapidly right now—to make sure that it's handling and efficiently processing all the passengers that are now going through the Austin airport,” said Kate Stotesbery, Doggett’s deputy chief and communications director.
ABIA will use the $15 million award to fund its?Airport Expansion and Development Program, which focuses on expanding and improving the Barbara Jordan Terminal, said Sam Haynes, ABIA's acting public information and marketing manager. Construction for a new baggage handling system for outbound bags and remote busing gates for Gate 13 are expected to begin this summer…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
Hutto appoints James Earp as new city manager (Community Impact)
James Earp, the current assistant city manager in Kyle, will serve as Hutto's new city manager.
Hutto City Council selected Earp for the position at a July 7 meeting.
The appointment comes following a months-long search that came to a head?last week?with a public open house and city council interviews with four?finalists?for the position.
In his interview with council June 30, Earp said his experience as assistant city manager in Kyle will help him to address growth in Hutto.
"A lot of the growth issues [and] a lot of the organizational challenges I have encountered in Kyle are directly relevant to where Hutto is today," Earp said…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
ABoR: Study calling Austin's housing market overvalued is flawed without context (KVUE)
A recent study by Florida Atlantic University ranked Austin as the second-most overvalued housing market in the country. But is that true?…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
Private equity powerhouse TA Associates picks Austin for third US office (Austin Business Journal)
Private equity heavyweight TA Associates Management LP plans to open an Austin office, the latest example of a deep-pocketed financial firm staking out a piece of the Texas capital.
Roy Burns, managing director and co-head of TA Associates' North American financial services investing, will lead "several colleagues who have also relocated to Austin," according to a?July 6 announcement. The office will be in the 515 Congress Ave. high-rise.
The exact number of people working in the new office and its square footage were not disclosed.
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The firms' leaders view an Austin office as conduit for investing in a dynamic region of the country and a chance to further develop TA Associates' presence in the Southwest, Southeast and Midwest.
"Over the last decade, Austin has emerged as a thriving, high-energy city due to its encouragement of entrepreneurship and commerce, coupled with the can-do spirit of its business leaders," Burns stated. "We are thrilled to join Austin's dynamic community as an investor in high-quality, growing and profitable companies."…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
Here’s what Austin’s subway stations could look like (KUT)
The most ambitious of Austin's light-rail plans would burrow four miles of tunnel beneath downtown and South Austin to connect six subterranean stations and create the city's first subway system.
The subway would make up the centralized portion of the light-rail network. The other 20 stations would be above-ground.
Project Connect's?growing price tag?— the cost of the transit tunnel alone has doubled to more than $4 billion — could force transit planners to scale back their underground aspirations.
But the vision presented by the Austin Transit Partnership (ATP) and their consultants previews a future where Austin would join the ranks of American cities with their own iconic subways like New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS]
The Texas Republican Party platform is official. What it says. (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
The Texas Republican Party rejected the results of the 2020 election, labeled being gay as “abnormal” and vowed to protect access to guns in its platform and corresponding resolutions. The platform, announced Wednesday and voted on during the June GOP convention in Houston, is a policy wish-list of items that some in the party have embraced and others rebuked. Delegates adopted all of the items that were presented in a draft version that was widely reported on. In addition to calling homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice,” the platform opposes same sex marriage. It asserts that Texas retains the right to secede. Delegates voted to replace the property tax system, support school choice and reject “critical race theory” and gun free zones. The platform calls for medical freedom and the repeal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Delegates also rejected “critical race theory” and supported a law “more comprehensive” than the one in Florida that prohibits instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Many of the platform items mirror policies supported on the 2020 platform, but the list of 274 platform planks indicates the Republican Party in Texas that continues to slide to the right, said Cal Jillson, a SMU political science professor, who noted that for decades the platform has been assessed every two years for how radical it is. “This is kind of the gloves off moment for the Republican Party,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor. Former president Donald Trump, praised the party’s platform. He wasn’t at the Houston convention in person, but Trump 2024 hats were on sale and Trump cardboard cutouts were on display in a convention hall filled with vendors. Many attendees wore clothing with Trump branding, and speakers lauded his policies and lamented the Biden administration’s. Trump called the platform powerful in a statement shared by the state party on June 21. “Such courage, but that’s why Texas is Texas!!!” Trump said. “They know that a Country cannot survive without Free and Fair Elections (and STRONG BORDERS!)“ Others have criticized the platform, including Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley who said it doesn’t represent most Republicans. “This platform does not represent the majority of Texas Republicans,” Whitley said in a June 22 statement. “The Texas Republicans I know and work with care about finding solutions to issues like the economy and public safety and are focused on individual rights and opportunity for all. Texans’ true values set Texas apart and will continue to — unless we allow this small group to pull us to the fringes and take our focus off of real leadership.”…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
After the gun bill, John Cornyn is now less popular than Ted Cruz (Texas Monthly)
For the past decade, Texas’s senior senator, John Cornyn, has been the straight man of the duo our state has sent to Congress’s upper chamber. Junior senator Ted Cruz is the type to pick fights with Muppets or talk about secession, while the seventy-year-old former Texas attorney general has served in relative anonymity. He’s spent much of his four terms playing Gallant to Cruz’s Goofus, coasting to reelection by double-digit margins in every campaign he’s run. For stretches of his career, the bulk of the Texans who elected him to high office couldn’t even rate his work and answered “don’t know” when asked to. Now that’s power.
The past few weeks, however, have revealed cracks in the aura of “I don’t know, he seems fine?” that has kept Cornyn ascending the GOP ranks to Senate minority whip. In late June, at the party’s Texas convention, Cornyn addressed the crowd—to a chorus of boos from conservatives displeased with his efforts to advance a (downright modest) gun safety bill in the wake of the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde. The bill did not include any weapons bans, and polling indicates that, among a broader pool of Texans than the ones who attend the convention, stricter gun laws are popular: 52 percent would like to see more-strict laws, while only 14 percent would like them to be loosened further—a group that, it’s safe to say, was significantly overrepresented by convention attendees…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATION]
Derek Chauvin gets 21 years for violating Floyd’s civil rights (Associated Press)
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Derek Chauvin to 21 years in prison for violating George Floyd’s civil rights, telling the former Minneapolis police officer that what he did was “simply wrong” and “offensive.” U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson sharply criticized Chauvin for his actions on May 25, 2020, when the white officer pinned Floyd to the pavement outside a Minneapolis corner store for more than 9 minutes as the Black man lay dying. Floyd’s killing sparked protests worldwide in a reckoning over police brutality and racism. “I really don’t know why you did what you did,” Magnuson said. “To put your knee on a person’s neck until they expired is simply wrong. … Your conduct is wrong and it is offensive.” Magnuson, who earlier this year presided over the federal trial and convictions of three other officers at the scene, blamed Chauvin alone for what happened. Chauvin was by far the senior officer present, and rebuffed questions from one of the others about whether Floyd should be turned on his side…?(LINK TO FULL STORY)
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Kristin and Bingham Group CEO A.J. discuss her path into PR and her career leading to the C-suite and ownership of the firm.->?EPISODE LINK
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